The Altermatrix
by Jonathan D. Smith
Summary: A story which happens during the events of the first Matrix film. It chronicles the tale of a once freed man named Fire, who is searching as to why he is stuck in the Matrix.
1. The Subject

The man was distant, unobtrusive. He walked slowly yet steadily through the common crowd of men, women, and children. His eyes were covered by sunglasses, and he wore a black leather jacket and black plants. His hair was black as pitch, and his right hand held a cell phone.  
  
As the cell phone rang aloud, the man jumped in fright. He expected the entire crowd to turn on him at the sound, to pull out weapons and fire on him. But they continued about their daily affairs, giving no notice to the phone. He pressed the answer button and held it to his ear.  
  
"Fire."  
  
" This is your humble operator," came the reply.  
  
" What can you give me, Drill?"  
  
" You've got an approaching agent to your right."  
  
The man, Fire, gazed around as his right hand moved into his jacket sleeve. As he looked at these people, he did not see them as humans. He saw them as software and hardware, all of which could be corrupted by a computer agent at any moment.  
  
He felt a hand touch his shoulder and in an instant his hand was out of his coat, firmly clasping a Glock. He spun and aimed it right at the head of an average sized man, wearing a finely tailored suit and basic sunglasses. Though he tried to hide it, he was frightened. No one had fought an agent. At least, no one who lived to tell the tale.  
  
He pulled the trigger, but before the bullet even hit the agent he had left the file and the bullet hit an old woman, dead on. She fell lifeless to the ground. The women surrounding him screamed in fright, and he looked down at the body. As he stared up at one screaming woman, he saw her face begin to twist and warp.  
  
He dashed off as he heard her scream take a male tone and heard the click of a handgun. There was a cry from the side and he looked to see two police officers also after him. Obviously, they weren't very happy about the murder of an innocent old woman. As he came out of the crowd, who were now suddenly all focused on him, he saw the two cops coming in on him from two different angles. As he glanced backwards, he saw the agent pushing his way through the crowd.  
  
Fire looked up and then at the crowd. He kneeled down and then leapt, and all memory of the laws of gravity left his thinking. He rose high into the air, as if powered by some invisible source, until he landed as soft as a feather on an overhang some twenty yards from the ground.  
  
There was a gasp from the crowd as the police officers and the agent reached the spot of his leap. The two officers gazed up at him in shock as he scrambled onto the rooftop of a duplex and ran at an impossible speed across it.  
  
" That's not.possible," one officer said. The agent saw a construction worker fixing the shingles on the duplex roof some ten yards ahead of the running Fire. There was a sizzle of energy and the two officers stood beside a frightened woman, who fainted on the spot.  
  
Meanwhile, Fire was dashing across the duplex rooftop, the Glock still firm in his grasp. He gazed back to see the two cops reviving the agent's former host, and turned back to see a construction worker morphing into the agent. The agent stood waiting for him. Fire raised the Glock and emptied his round.  
  
The agent's frame dispersed and appeared translucent in many different places, until each bullet missed its intended mark and flew through a mere trail of the agents body. It moved faster than life itself. Fire stopped and dropped his Glock to the shingles of the roof. He pulled out his cell phone.  
  
"I really need an exit," he said.  
  
"An exit, Mr. McGuire?" the agent smirked. " I am quite certain that you will not find an exit anytime soon."  
  
The agent jumped at Fire and hit him directly across the face. Fire hovered in between consciousness from the sheer power of the blow, until blackness took him.  
  
***  
  
The rain pelted Fire's face as his eyes fluttered, life flowing through him once again. His hand came up to his face and it was very sore. Merely touching it surged pain through his body. He struggled to his feet and saw that he was in a small alleyway. It was nighttime, and for a moment Fire forgot that he was not in the real world, forgot that there was a matrix at all. If only such a delusion could last. Soon, images of the chase that afternoon filled his memory.  
  
He felt for the cell phone in his pocket, and found it untouched. He pressed the auto-dial button.  
  
"Your humble operator."  
  
" Drill."  
" Fire, is that you?"  
" I need.I need."  
" An exit?" Drill asked. Fire heard the sound of quick typing. " I've got one for you. There's a payphone just around the corner."  
Fire hung up the cell phone and heard a muted ringing through the pouring rain. He struggled his way out of the alley, and saw a payphone booth just five meters away. He trudged up to it and opened the door. The phone continued ringing. He picked it up and placed it to his ear. He waited for the rush of coming back to life, breathing real air in the real world.  
That rush never came. Instead of being devoured by the phone, instead of awaking from the matrix, he merely heard a dial tone. He waited patiently, but this dial tone merely continued. After nearly a minute, he heard a voice.  
" If you would like to make a call, please hang up and try again. For a personal directory, press 0 to dial your local area operator. If you are communicating via a payphone, make sure that you have paid the sufficient payment for the correct operation of the phone."  
Fire dropped the phone, shocked. As he stepped out of the payphone booth, and recalled the agent's words:  
"I am quite certain you will not find an exit anytime soon."  
Fire walked under the overhang of an apartment building and fell asleep to the sound of the rain. It was the first night he had actually slept in the matrix for a long time. His dreams were not true dreams, but they were enjoyable. 


	2. The Truth

The men were far from human, but in respectable appearance looked the part in every way. Other than their constant anti-benevolent behavior, they might have passed as just another human. But they were not. They were the agents of a complex, twisted system named the matrix.  
They stood around a leather chair, where the body of a man named Darrel McGuire sat, wires hooked into his head from all directions. At times he shifted his position, but he was completely oblivious to the agents surrounding him.  
In unison, the three agents grabbed their white earpieces, and nodded.  
" Smith is coming," they said simultaneously. The door to the small room they were in opened and a man in similar garb stepped in. His removed his sunglasses and placed them in his breast pocket.  
" Agent Smith," one of the men nodded in acknowledgement.  
" Is this the test subject?" the new arrival asked.  
" Yes," the greeter replied. " He was captured this afternoon here, in the matrix. We have plugged him into the altermatrix. He is currently sleeping within it. He awoke and gave no indication that he knew that he was not in the true matrix. We even used his own memory cells to generate real-time responses to him by his 'operator' in the real world. The operation is thus far a success. Might we inquire, however, sir, as to why we are doing this?"  
"I do not see how it could hurt," Smith replied. " We have identified the next target of the famous one called Morpheus. They believe he could be what they call 'The One'."  
" The anomaly?"  
" The same. One of Morpheus crew members had contacted us. He wishes that he could be reinserted in the matrix, in exchange for his treachery to his own crew. He will compromise the anomaly, in exchange for reinsertion. So we have agreed to it."  
" But, sir," the inquiring agent asked. " Reinsertion is impossible."  
Agent Smith smiled. " Of course it is. That is why we are testing this one they call.Fire. We will deceive this one called Cypher by entering him into a much simpler computer program, not the real matrix. He will not know the difference."  
" There is only one problem, sir. These simpler programs only consist of one hemisphere each. Should the subjects leave these perimeters, they will wake up."  
" That is why these alternate matrices are designed so as to keep them from leaving those boundaries. Such as your Fire. He is wondering why he cannot leave the matrix. We will give him clues, places to go, to find the answer. The distance of these places will seem plausible to the sub-reality that he expects of the matrix, but short of the boundaries of awakening."  
Smith's gaze dropped down to the body of Darrell McGuire. " He is about to receive that first clue very soon. Just remember, gentlemen.do not let him wake up."  
With that, the agent took his leave. 


	3. An Old Friend?

Fire awoke to the prod of a police rod. He rubbed his eyes to see a police officer jabbing his ribs lightly.  
" I thought you'd never wake up," the officer said. " Listen, pal, I hate to bum you, but sleeping is illegal on city property."  
Fire rose to his feet, trying to remember his casual conduct he had used when he had been a mere computer programmer living out his oblivious life in the matrix some five years earlier.  
" I'm sorry, officer," he nodded. " I normally don't fall asleep like that, right on the side of the street. I don't know what must have led to that."  
" Rough night, eh?" the officer asked. " Well, just don't let me catch you doing it anymore, alright?"  
" Oh, I can assure you, you won't."  
The officer looked intently at Fire, then walked off. Fire breathed a deep sigh of relief and turned to see that he was in front of a television store. Its display window housed a large, plasma television. His face was on it, with the word WANTED above it. The text below it read that he was wanted for the death of Caroline Mays, and elderly woman from Chicago.  
He looked up and saw that the store adjacent to the television shop was a clothing store. He casually walked in.  
  
Some ten minutes later he walked out wearing a large ball cap and his sunglasses. He walked along the streets of the matrix's Chicago, contemplating things as he did. He could come to no resolution within his mind.  
There was a gap of unknown time between when he had blacked out and when he woke up the previous evening in the alleyway. Was it really the same evening as the chase? For all he knew, years had passed. He had to find out the truth. And he knew the first place to check.  
Towering above all of the near buildings was a large office complex. It was very familiar to Fire. It was his place of work before he had been unplugged. He walked into the building's front doors.  
Five minutes later he exited the elevator at the thirty-sixth floor of the office building. He walked through, staring at the computer programmers typing away endlessly at their cubicles. These were the greatest potentials for unplugging, those in this trade. They seemed to grasp the truth more easily.  
He continued onward, however, without speaking to any of them, until he came to the office at the end of the large room. His rapped lightly at the door, then decided to enter the room unanswered anyway. He opened the door and saw his former boss, Jeffrey Mason. Jeff looked up from the folder he was staring at.  
" Can I help you?"  
" Jeff," was all that Fire could muster.  
" Do.we know each other?" Jeff asked, rising from his desk and approaching fire. Fire slowly removed his hat and sunglasses, and Jeff's eyes widened.  
"Darre-" the man began, but Jeff covered his mouth. He motioned Jeff to sit back down, and Fire took the seat opposite the desk. He looked at the shocked man sinking into his leather plush seat.  
" Listen to me, Jeff," Fire said. " I do not have time to explain everything. I need to get some answers, so I'm starting with you. Did anyone come to talk to you after my absence?"  
" Well, of course, Darrell," Jeff replied. " I mean, you just disappeared into thin air, seemingly. Heck, reporters, analysts, priests, oodles of people came and talked to me."  
" Do you remember any specific names, or titles?"  
" Darrell, it was five years ago. And besides, I've tried to forget it."  
" These people that I'm thinking about would be hard to forget," Fire said. " They probably wore suits, had sunglasses, talked very rhythmic."  
" There was one who came with the authorities when I was questioned who would probably fit that description," Jeff said. " He only asked me one question. It sort of creeped me out, man. I wasn't being very cooperative with the police, so he stepped forward and grabbed my collar. Then he said 'A man who dreams dreams within a dream cannot outwit a man who never sleeps'."  
Those words sent a chill even through Fire's spine. If only Jeffery knew they truth. If he could tell him the truth. Jeff let those words settle in, then continued.  
" Then he asked me if you had been searching for information other than typical program work in the past view weeks. I told him that I don't monitor the work of my programmers on their break, because I respect their privacy. He stormed out of the room and the police officers followed."  
Fire was only half listening. He looked out of the window to the office and saw agents coming out of the elevator.  
" Sorry, Jeff. I have to go."  
With that, Fire walked up to the large window facing the city streets. He gulped and jumped through the glass, crashing it. Just as he fell from sight, agents burst into the room, firing everywhere.  
" Don't worry, gentlemen, he is gone," Jeff said. " It is going just as planned."  
" So he does not even suspect that you are a program?" an agent asked.  
" No. He believes that I am truly his old boss," Jeff said. " Just as he believes that this is the real matrix." 


End file.
